Bad Sisters Recap: Aftershocks

You’re not yourself in the wake of a huge trauma — not the best version of yourself, anyway. How could you be? It’s all you can do to put one foot in front of the other without falling into despair. Until the dust has settled, and the sharp pain in your side subsides into a thudding ache, your “best self” (whatever that means) will just have to wait.

Unfortunately for the Garveys, they have to contend with Grace’s death amid countless interruptions from the police, Angelica, and an endless parade of funeral handshakers. They barely have time to absorb the situation before none other than Seemingly Lovely Ian shows up. He’s unscathed, if late to his own wife’s funeral (and therefore demoted to merely “Ian” from now on) and still very shaken by the revelation that Seemingly Meek Grace did, in fact, murder her first husband.

This transitional episode mostly serves to set up exactly why and how everything’s gotten so fucked up all over again. As tight-knit as the Garveys are, there are now far too many ways they could be caught for their part in covering up JP’s murder. Between Ian, Roger, Angelica, and (oh right!) Matt Clafin, my biggest question now isn’t if the Garveys will get caught, but who may be the ultimate squealer.

In the meantime, Grace’s sisters are (very understandably!) falling apart. Eva’s got her hands full between phantom abdominal pain and Blánaid lashing out as only a hurt teen can. Bibi, my one true damaged love, can’t stop cracking jokes. Becka … well, she might just be in shock. Ursula even voices the unbearable possibility that “none of this would’ve happened if we’d just stayed out of it.” But I don’t buy that. Grace didn’t know they were trying to kill JP when she went ahead and did it herself — and if she hadn’t, there’s a very real possibility he would have killed her first. He was already a noxious piece of work draining the life force from her right in front of their eyes. Unfortunately for Grace, and every other person trapped in an abusive relationship, getting out in one piece was never a guarantee at all.

In her role as the long-suffering eldest daughter, Eva gamely tries to get them back into a recognizable rhythm, even while going through the surreal motions of picking the last outfit Grace will ever wear. “We can’t just go inside of ourselves and become fucking polite to each other,” she insists, Irish-ly. (Bibi, eyeing the modest blazer option: “Okay, I … hope she gets the assistant manager’s job at the petrol station.”)

Still, it’s Ursula who really loses the plot in this episode, making a series of truly terrible decisions that quickly come back to haunt her and make “Missing” an even harder watch than it already was. For one, she’s terrified that the pills she gave Grace to “calm down” contributed to the crash. When she goes to identify the body (“Don’t call her ‘the body,’” Eva says), Ursula even tries to head off any toxicology report that might implicate her by appealing to her speed-dating history with Detective Fergal for sympathy. Even he, a canonically terrible detective, doesn’t buy it. “We chatted for 15 minutes, we had a drunk snog, you called me Donald 17 times and never returned my texts,” he points out, securing a rare W in the art of observation.

Making matters worse for Ursula is the baffling fact that in a particularly vulnerable moment after the funeral, she shares her fears with Angelica. Of all people to hand a secret to, a religious busybody has to be among the worst. Directed by Stacey Gregg, the scene in which Angelica finds Ursula dissociating in the sunroom, gray rain beating down on the glass ceiling, is perfectly unnerving. You can really feel how Ursula starts to feel simultaneously claustrophobic and all too exposed as Angelica’s self-righteous “sympathy” intensifies. And yet something about her pious active listening face really gets to Urs. She not only tells Angelica about the possible pill problem but calls her incessantly after the funeral to make sure she didn’t tell anyone else, which is just about the worst way to convince anyone of your innocence.

Angelica’s reaction to Urs spinning out? Blackmailing her into handing over enough hush money to fix the community center’s smashed window. Stay classy, Angelica! Ursula’s no good, very bad, terrible month then gets even worse when Ali, her ex-husband’s new nurse girlfriend, realizes that she’s been the one who’s been stealing pills from the hospital. The only “relief” Ursula gets is when Grace’s tox report comes up clean, but even that hits her in such a forceful wave that all she can do is sob. This episode is an all-timer for Eva Birthistle, who really has to portray a full gamut of emotions in Ursula’s breakdown, but whew. Tough stuff.

It’s unclear at this point whether or not Angelica actually snitched to the hospital as Ursula assumes she did. I’m not convinced, if only because Ursula is an addict who’s nowhere near as slick as she thinks she is in her attempts to hide it. Either way, though, Angelica’s proved herself to be a formidable and deeply contemptible foe — and that’s all before this episode ends with her exchanging a knowing smile with Blánaid, a genuinely chilling image, because ??? (Fiona Shaw has nothing to prove at this point in her storied career, but damn is she good.)

JP’s odious bullshit was obvious to anyone who spoke to him for more than 12 seconds, but Angelica, the “grief thief,” could be just as dangerous to the Garveys. She uses her religious devotion as a cudgel. She lifts herself up as the One True Community Leader and cloaks her selfishness with a sickly smile. Her reasoning that “that which is done in love cannot be bad” is the kind of justification she could twist to fit any scenario she likes. Her sympathy for anyone except maybe Roger (poor broken Roger) is entirely conditional and transactional — which leads Ursula to the unfortunately reasonable conclusion that Angelica might have tried to blackmail Grace too.

So … yeah, it’s not looking great for the Garveys. They still don’t know what happened between Grace and Ian the night she died, or why she took out so much cash and bolted. They don’t know what Angelica said to her then or is saying to anyone else now. They don’t even know if they can trust Ian “I’m the Father Who Stepped Up” Riley. All they know is that everything feels terrible, nothing makes sense, and the only thing to do is find the strength — in each other, if not themselves — to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Loose Ends

• On that note, it’s probably worth noting that even when shit’s unbearably bleak, Bad Sisters can still be very funny! Fergal sucks at his job, but Barry Ward doesn’t (A+ comic timing from him every time), and the priest barely getting through the funeral post-stroke is the kind of perfect lived-in detail that makes this show as good as it is.

• A quick mea culpa: I’ve already missed a couple of distinctly Irish references this season, including assuming that Blánaid plays field hockey and that the opening credits include baseballs. I was wrong on both! She plays camogie (a womens’ variant of Irish hurling) with those stitched balls already strewn throughout the season.

• I want to root for Houlihan as a “fuck you” to her boorish boss, but she made it really hard this week while relishing every twist in the case, whether in the office or at a funeral. Fair enough to want to solve a murder or whatever, but have some decorum, babe!

• That being said, Houlihan’s reaction to Matt (“I noticed him at the funeral — not like that. Well, a little like that”) was entirely relatable and correct. Please get Daryl McCormack back on my screen now. Thank you!

• Bibi’s been playing semi-pro poker the last couple years, huh? Good for my angry wife, I hope she’s been cleaning up.

• Just gonna note here that Eva and Ian have a Vibe and leave it at that (… for now).